ANIMAL PARASITES. 95 



induced by their consumption as an article of food may have 

 been created, while a separate niche in our anthropological mu- 

 seums is resei'ved for the instruments of warfare, both oflensive 

 and defensive, used by their phthiriophagous huntei's. Then have 

 we not in the very centres of civilization the poor and degraded, 

 which are most faithfully attended by tliese revolting satellites ! 

 But bantering aside, there is no more engaging subject to the 

 naturalist than that of animal parasites. Consider the great 

 proportion of animals that gain their livelihood by stealing, that 

 of otliers. While a large proportion of plants are more or less 

 parasitic, they gaiu thereby in interest to the botanist, and 

 many of them are eagerly sought as the choicest ornaments of 

 our conservatories. Not so with their zoological confreres. 

 All that is repulsive and uncanny is associated with them, and 

 those who study them, though perhaps anaoug the keenest intel- 

 lects and most industrious observers, speak of them without 

 the limits of their own circle in subdued whispers or under a 

 protest, and their works fiiU under the eyes of the scantiest 

 few. But the study of animal parasites has opened up new 

 fields of research, all bearing most intimately on those two 

 questions that ever incite the naturalist to the most laborious 

 and untiring diligence — what is life and its origin ? The sub- 

 jects of the alternation of generations, or parthenogenesis, of 

 embryology and biology, owe their great advance, in large 

 degree, to the study of such animals as are parasitic, and the 

 question whether the origin of species be due to creation by 

 the action of secondary laws or not, will be largely met and 

 answered by the study of the varied metamorphoses and modes 

 of growth, the peculiar modification of organs that adapt them 

 to their strange modes of life, and the consequent variation in 

 specific characters so remarkably characteristic of those ani- 

 mals living parasitically upon others.* 



With these considerations in view surely a serious, thought- 

 ful, and thorough study of the louse, in all its varieties and 

 species, is neither belittling nor degrading, nor a waste of time. 

 We venture to say, moreover, that more light will be thrown 

 on the classification and morphology of insects by the study of 



* We notice while preparing tliis article that a journal of Parasitology lias lor 

 some time been jpsueil iu Germany — that favored land of specialists. It is the 

 "Zeitschrift fur PurasiteukunUe,'' edited by Dr. E. Hallier and F A. Zuru. 8vo, 

 Jena. 



